[plug] dd'ing Windows disks

[Arie Hol]

At 09:54 AM 13-09-2003 +0800, you wrote:

8<--------snip---------->8
>The weird thing is that the old disk still boots (although Windows barfs 
>halfway through the boot process if the second disk is attached as a slave), 
>but the new one doesn't. I disconnect the old one, switch the jumpers and 
>cables to the new one, and the BIOS tells me there's a disk error and that I 
>should press ctrl-alt-del. The BIOS can see the disk, and identifies it 
>correctly, so I'm somewhat baffled.
>

As far as I know - a PC can only have one 'active' partition - regardless
of how drives or partitions may exist on the machine.

If you have removed the drive which the system normally boots from - then
the system will not have an 'active partition' to boot from - hence the
system will will not boot - it should display an error message to that effect.

The mbr may well have been copied from the original boot drive to the second
drive - but - as soon as you reboot the system the OS will detect 'multiple
active partitions' and reset the secondary 'active partition' to 'inactive'
thus allowing the system to boot from the 'primary master' - ie: C:\ drive.

If you want to boot from the second drive you must set the boot partition to
'active' - this can be done using 'fdisk' or Partition Magic.

If you use fdisk /mbr - the system will simply replace the first copy of the
FAT with the second copy of the FAT - it will not set the boot partition to
'active'.


In regard to your comment :

"although Windows barfs halfway through the boot process if the second disk
is attached as a slave, "

This could be because the windows registry contains configuration(file/path)
settings which may be pointing the the second  partition (D:\) - but it
cannot find the file - so it barfs - you may be able to fix this problem
using Norton Utilities - run the 'WinDoctor' utility - it will check every
registry setting and if an indicated file/path does not match the location
of the actual file - 'WinDoctor' will repair the file/path setting -
provided the file/path actually exists on the system.

HTH


Regards Arie Hol

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For the concert of life, nobody has a program.

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